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DIY: Do It Yourself Post here to share or improve your wrench turning skills! All BMW E46 DIY tips, tales, and projects discussed inside. Learn to work on your car and know the right BMW parts you will need!

Here it is. The quick, simple, iPod hookup (assuming you have a disc changer).
Sorry for the terrible (phone) pics and the lack of detailed pictures. I started out taking tons of pictures, but after 4 different attempts of figuring out how to make this work, I was tired of all the useless ones. So here it goes....

1) Take the RCA end of the headphone converter cable and cut the RCA (red/white) Connectors off, so you just have the wires. strip the black outer rubber from the wires. inside, there will be a bare copper wire and another wire, which also has an insulator. (see picture) Do this for both the red and the white side. Then strip the inner insulation, so you have all 4 of the inner wires with the actual wire exposed.

2) Pull the 6-pin connector from the rear of the CD changer. Use the exacto knife to cut a slice along the jacket of the cable and cut off about 2-3 inches of the jacket, so you have that 2-3 inches of the inner wires exposed and easy to work with. With your scissors/wire strippers, cut the red, white, and gray wires

3) with the cable side of the wires, connect as follows (bmw cable/RCA cable):
-white/white
-gray/yellow
-red/bare (connect both of the bare RCA wires into the same connector)

Use heat shrink tubing if wanted:

4) leave the 3-pin connector plugged into the cd changer. The 6-pin connector can remain unplugged

My final connection shown below. CD changer cable > RCA Cable > RCA to Headphone jack converter cable > iPod
I plan on routing the rca/headphone input along the original wire, then through the back seat, under the carpet, and into the rear ash tray, and connecting an ipod mini.

Hope this helps everyone. $10-$20 for supplies and a couple hours out of your life seems a lot better to me than $150 for a kit.

3 two 3
It plays through your CD changer input, so rather than having it transmit over a station, you just select CD on your radio, as if you were trying to listen to your CD Changer.

Sansho
You can't control the iPod through the radio or the steering wheel this way, this is just an input. What i plan on doing is buying a Griffin in-line remote (like on the iPod headphones):http://www.amazon.com/Auxiliary-Audi.../dp/B001UGXC8K
Just hook this up between the iPod and the RCA/Headphone jack cable. It will let you pause/play/next/prev/ff/rw. You can't actually pick which song to listen to though, without doing it manually on the iPod
I plan to run this up into the center console arm rest.

DontWriteGraff
I dont know for sure, since i have not actually looked at one, myself. I would assume that the car would still come wired for the CD changer. If not, this cable can be accessed by pulling the head unit out of the dash, and it's the smaller of the two plugs on the back side of the radio.
The only thing that I am not sure how to get around is getting your radio to allow you to select the CD input. If I disconnect the 3-pin connector on the back of the changer, the radio will tell me that there is no cd available, would have to do some research to figure out how to loophole around thatEDIT: Is that your car in your sig? This writeup is for the pre-facelift E46's. You should have (I would assume) the newer version of this radio. Try this thread: http://forum.e46fanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422239

And yes, I forgot to include it earlier, but by cutting the wires to the changer the way I did, the CD changer will no longer be an option.
The only way around this is when cutting the red/white/gray wires, splice them back together, along with the headphone cable (or use an in-line t-connector to tap into the wires).
This will, however, cause multiple audio sources (cd changer and ipod) to send signal simultaneously, causing them to play on top of each other through your speakers. To get around this, create one CD with a single song that has no audio.

I've taken 9deuce9rr's concept (thanks for the idea!) and tweaked it slightly. When i got my E46 it had a sony Cd changer linked to the BMW headunit via a connects2 box. I honestly cannot remember the last time I got a CD and everything I download goes onto my android phone. By leaving the control lead from the connects2 box to the Cd changer in place I ran an RCA lead from the connect2 box to the centre console which gave me the same set up as above (select CD but plug my phone in to the end of the lead to use music from my phone).

This is where I changed things! A few years ago I unstalled 2 powered USB ports under the front arm rest so I could charge my phone\satnav\camera from it but as thing have changed I dont use it anymore. I connected the rca cable to the pins on the USB ports then made a USB to headphone lead which connects my phone (or any audio device) to the connects2 box - audio hookup done!

The advantage of this is I havent cut any wires and can plug the CD changer back in easily plus the USB ports are hidden under the arm rest so when I sell the car it should cause any problems.

This post is aimed at helping E46 owners with older OEM Blaupunkt Business CD players, who want to play MP3s and improve the sound quality.

I just changed my OEM BMW Blaupunkt unit (2001 330i) to an OEM BMW Alpine Unit (Jan 2003 or newer) in order to fix an AUX Cable that can play MP3s or other audio through a standard stereo jack.

The only alteration I made was get a couple of Antena adapters from 'Future Shop' (Canada). The rest of the cables/ plugs fit exacty.

BMW also makes the Aux Cable for this stereo. I think its about $70 in Canada, if I remember correctly. (BMW Part No. 65120153503 - OEM Aux cable). However, I orderd one for about $25 on ebay, works perfectly.

The Alpine unit has much better sound compared to the Blaupunkt unit. The music simply comes alive. (I am also into music, sound and pro-audio, so I can safely say I understand the difference. To my ears the same CD plays so much better on the Alpine system.)

If you look hard and long you may come accross a Post on kijji/Craigslist for a 2003+ Alpine stereo for about $100 - $150 from some E46 owner, who may have gone the aftermarket route.

This is a clean and fail safe way to upgrade your stereo. Manintain OEM looks & controls. No cutting wires at all.

Hope this helps.

Any work performed related to this post is undertaken at the risk & responcibility of the reader. The author of this post assumes no liability in any form.

I've been reviewing this DIY and am going to tackle it this weekend, however I am just slightly confused as what exactly the "connectors" are as quoted above.
I didn't read of any connecting of connectors throughout the DIY except when OP stated the quote below.

Quote:

Originally Posted by 9deuce9rr

-red/bare (connect both of the bare RCA wires into the same connector)

can someone perhaps post a picture so I know exactly what it is I'm looking for.

also, how is it that these connections are connected together? and where did the yellow connector come from? I thought that the red and white connectors were cut off in step one to obtain the red, white, and bare wires. Because following the headphone jack connector wire, it looks like it leads up to the red and white cables that i thought were cut off.